Birdhouse in your soul
by Soroka
Summary: The year is 1998 and parapsychologist Noriaki Kakyoin could really use a break. His research at the Speedwagon Foundation is going nowhere, he's estranged from his loved ones and deep down he's starting to doubt his capacity to make a difference. That is, until an unknown stand-user shows up at his doorstep with an unusual request that will make him question every belief he's held.
1. Chapter 1

"So was that when the first manifestation occurred?" Kakyoin spoke into the videoconference microphone.

Jean-Pierre Polnareff's blurry face on the computer screen scrunched up at the question. He sat in silence for a while until the corners of its mouth curved in slight amusement. "You mean if that was the first time I saw Silver Chariot?"

Kakyoin nodded and tapped a gnawed pencil on a fat stack of papers that rose in the middle of his desk like a lone monument to a job left unfinished. Polnareff let out a long sigh and moved his wheelchair closer to the camera. "Yeah, that's right. Does the Speedwagon Foundation pay you by the word or something?"

Kakyoin did not reply but felt a smile ghost across lips as he bent down to make a note of the date, October thirty first, nineteen eighty four. Two months after Sherri Polnareff was tragically taken from this world by J. Geil and coincidentally, right on Halloween when the barrier between the living and the dead was considered to be the weakest. The last fact was, of course, just a coincidence, absolutely meaningless and unscientific. The first one, on the other hand, might lead him to something extraordinary if he paid attention to the right coincidences.

He squinted in the burning glow of the screen, fighting back a yawn. Night had fallen already and a full moon hung like an unblinking eye over the city of Hondai, peering into what was now probably the only lit room in the entire building. For a moment, he regarded it with dull surprise; he could not remember seeing the light bleed away from the sky. In fact he could not remember anything at all since he had walked in this morning and sat at his desk. He had just started typing and checking his research notes and then typing again until eventually the building around him quieted down and the low droning hum of his computer was the only sound he could hear. It was not until his alarm clock sputtered to life on his desk, reminding him that he had a videoconference soon, that he noticed his stomach loudly demanding his attention and that his entire body had been running on fumes. The world swam briefly before his eyes before he forced himself to focus wishing that for once, time zones would be in his favor. He had been told that he did his best work at night but it didn't necessarily have to be every night.

"Kakyoin? Are you all right?"

Polnareff's question rang louder than he had expected, sending piercing ripples of feedback into his ears. He winced and threw the headphones off, changing the audio to the pair of dusty speakers that flanked his computer.

"I'm fine", he replied as he blinked the white aura away from his vision. "Sorry, you were saying...?

Polnareff's eyes narrowed at his response, a striking blue on his now uncharacteristically tanned face. The window behind his friend was wide open to a green hilly landscape bathed in the generous light of the Italian sun. Modest white curtains flapped under a gentle summer breeze and above them, a small glass chime threw multicolored sunspots over bare wooden floorboards. It was the picture of peace and quiet and for a second, Kakyoin's thoughts acquired a faint green tinge of envy. He would have given just about anything to have a quiet summer afternoon all to himself in some remote corner of the world. To him, summer usually meant endless research, tight deadlines and typing all the way into the little hours of the night until he fell asleep on the keyboard. His work did not always get to see the light of day but when it did, the rush of accomplishment and pride was overwhelming enough to wipe his memory clear of the misery and make him return to his desk, where the cycle began anew.

"Are you sure?" Polnareff weaved his fingers under his chin and peered at him intently. "Because you look like you could use a propping device for your head. Don't you think you've been overdoing it lately?"

Kakyoin suppressed a bitter laugh as he reached over to a coffee machine and blindly pressed a button combination he had come to learn by heart. He remembered hearing the same words a year ago, this time, coming from Joseph Joestar. He had sounded reproachful, like the curmudgeonly grandfather Kakyoin had never seen him as which made the lecture that followed even more poignant. He had urged him to enjoy life before it was over, to travel the world and to not lose touch with the friends he made. When he put the phone down after a good thirty minutes he had a smile on his face but pangs of guilt had knotted his stomach for the rest of day. There had been such longing in his voice, such bittersweet melancholy that Kakyoin wondered how often had he repeated the same speech to his other younger friends and how much time had they all spared to listen to him lately. Out of all of them who survived their chaotic trip through Egypt, Joseph Joestar was the only one with enough authority to talk about such matters. He had, after all, quite literally come back from the dead.

Then again, the man's two most hated words were "hard work" and second two were "working hard." One had to take his advice with an oversized grain of salt.

He took out a styrofoam cup from the machine and took a long sip from it feeling his tired brain buzz back to life. "Psychologists have a hard time being taken seriously already. I have to overdo it just to get people to stop laughing and listen."

He saw Polnareff's smile waver at his words and wondered if they were now thinking about the same thing. About three years ago, when he had finally managed to publish a stand-related article in the American Journal of Psychology, the backlash had been harsh and swift. Most of his peers just dismissed it outright while others shunned him and anyone who had supported him for damaging the credibility of their field. One of Jotaro's co-workers in Florida had even uploaded it to his own virtual wall of shame right next to a particularly outlandish piece about mermaids. That coworker had since left the department for reasons Jotaro was never quite clear about but the damage was already done. Kakyoin's reputation had recovered eventually after more of his articles were submitted for peer review and found to be sound but X-files posters still found their way to his work address with occasional scathing remarks written on their backs.

"Man, that's rough," Polnareff's mouth twisted as his eyes sought the camera again. "It's good that we have the Foundation, then. They're bound to have your back no matter what, right?"

Kakyoin gave him a curt nod and looked back at his notes, feeling a familiar bitterness well up in his throat again. Learning more about stands had been his lifelong ambition, one that, he knew from the very start would not be easy to pursue. He had gotten used to criticism by now, parapsychology made you grow a thick skin in record time, but if there was any place on earth where it could flourish, it was at the Speedwagon Foundation. Since the early thirties, it had been one of the very few private institutions to put tangible resources behind the study of the paranormal. They didn't like calling attention to that, choosing instead to regal the press with their breakthroughs in other fields but behind closed doors they took their supernatural department just as seriously and were just as enthusiastic about their contributions.

Or at least that had been his impression before he joined.

"Right, sure..." He pressed his lips into a tight line and rubbed his temples, trying to concentrate on the screen in front of him. "So you're sure that there were no sightings before? You never, maybe, reached for something with your stand without noticing or read something that was several feet behind you?"

"Not really, no." Polnareff drummed his fingers on the table, his face lined with thought. "Though, I got this weird feeling sometimes, like someone was watching over me. Sherri always said that it was mom's ghost." He trailed off, blue eyes looking straight through the camera at a memory that only they could see. "You think that might have been Chariot?"

Kakyoin bit his lip pensively as he jotted the information down. Nine years ago, on an unbearably warm night in India, Jotaro told him that the first time he had felt Star Platinum's presence, he had assumed it was some sort of evil spirit haunting him. He said that with a completely straight face, almost daring Kakyoin to laugh at him for believing in such things. He wondered if Jotaro would be relieved to know how many stands users had shared that exact same feeling of paranoia. In fact, Polnareff was the first person he knew to look at his budding supernatural abilities through a more optimistic lens.

"It's difficult to say now", he replied, "but it's still useful information. Brain waves associated with stand activity sometimes remain at low frequency throughout most of a person's life until something particularly distressing triggers them. That feeling you're describing might have been their first spikes."

Polnareff stared at him for a while, the lines in his forehead growing deeper by the second. When he spoke again, his voice grew somber. "So, you think that I got my stand because Sherri died? That it was trauma or something like that?"

Kakyoin leaned back in his chair and let out a deep sigh. After more than three months of tireless work he felt like he was looping right back to where he had started. The research pool for stand users was small and not likely to grow in the near future unless Joseph Joestar had more descendants or little Jolyne Kujo took after her father. Polnareff had been one of his best and more reliable sources on early stand development but if he wanted to prove his hypothesis, he needed more, a lot more. He thought of how fascinating Abdul would have found this investigation and felt his heart ache at the memory.

"Not exactly," he replied and ran a tired hand through his uncombed hair. "I think that you've always had it with you. It just never manifested until you were subjected to extreme stress." He took another swig from the cup and made a face at the cold coffee in his mouth. "Don't quote me on that, though. It's still just a theory."

"I see."

Kakyoin saw him cross his arms in thought as if taking in the bittersweet connection he had just established between his greatest source of power and the most tragic moment in his life. For a second, he felt bad for even asking him to be a part of his investigation. Talking about stands usually meant digging deep into a person's past and there were some things in Polnareff's that were better left untouched. Kakyoin could always tell how his eyes darkened when he talked about Sherri's death. It was the same shadow that fell over his face when he talked about Abdul and Iggy, one that clouded even the happiest memories and one that would never truly disappear. He suspected that his friend had never really learned to deal with death despite the fact that it had followed him since he was a child. That was why there was a fluffy dog basket in his room covered in Boston terrier hair and why there were several books on Egyptian culture stacked on top of one another on his desk. Polnareff was the kind of person that fought tooth and nail to retain at least a tiny fragment of the people he had lost, even if it was something as small as a lock of dark, curly hair next to a faded picture. This kind of attitude sometimes worried him before he began to wonder if his own approach, keeping his departed friends only in his thoughts, was any better.

The speakers on his table registered a faint screeching as Polnareff moved his wheelchair away from the table and bent down to re-adjust his prosthetic legs. Watching him gently fiddle with the metal fasteners, Kakyoin felt a sting of pity and shame. It couldn't have been easy for his friend to live wheelchair-bound and alone in a foreign country. With his parents and sister gone, he would have nowhere to turn if he ever needed help. Despite the difficulties of the past couple of months, he had never heard the Frenchman complain. He was adapting quite well to his new circumstances and seemed happy to be alive at all. Still, every time Kakyoin glanced at that wheelchair, he felt his stomach sink at the thought of his body lying bleeding and broken at the foot of a cliff. Fate had once again chosen to spare his foolish friend and he could only hope that he was smart enough not to tempt it again.

"I'm sorry."

He was barely aware of speaking the words out loud until he saw Polnareff move closer to the camera, eyebrows furrowed. Concern flickered in his eyes before he raised his hands in reassurance. "Come on! What's with the doom and gloom all of a sudden? My sister always managed to bring out the best in people so this is kind of fitting. I just wish she had lived to see Chariot. She would have loved to have a big brother with superpowers."

The Frenchman's voice acquired that lighthearted sing-songy cadence he knew all too well. It was the same one he used to try and liven up the mood when things got a bit too heavy for his liking. For a moment, Kakyoin was tempted to play along and skirt around his quickly darkening thoughts but instead, he shook his head and said, "I don't mean about Sherri. I mean, about not being there when you fought Diavolo."

This time it was Polnareff's turn to be speechless. He eyed him in disbelief as if he had just told him that the earth was flat. "What the hell are you talking about? Did you forget that you nearly died in Egypt? You're what thirty percent machine, now?"

Kakyoin shifted unconsciously in his chair at the mention of his mechanical spine. There were times when he forgot about it completely except when it came to airport security checks. The look on the staff's faces was almost worth it until it became clear that they would not let him pass through without pressing their fingers against his bare skin to feel the metal underneath.

He rolled his eyes at the exaggeration. "More like thirteen percent and who cares about that? I wanted to be there to help you and then I just got sidetracked."

The last word left a bitter taste in his mouth for it rang too close to home as he had expected. The Hondai subway split neatly into two main tracks, one leading to the airport and flights to visit his friends overseas and another towards the Speedwagon Foundation Supernatural Research Facility which had been his workplace for more than four years now. In those years, he had found himself drifting further and further away from the airport line as weeks turned into months and months into seasons. He had seen Christmases roll around and collide with one another as time became a long chain of research and typing with occasional breaks for meals. On the plus side, it had eventually gotten him noticed by scientific publications he couldn't dream of reaching but that was probably because by then, he didn't sleep much anymore.

It had also kept him from a lot of birthdays and also from joining Jotaro and Polnareff trip across Europe in search of the mysterious arrows found by Enya at an archaeological dig in Egypt. After Jotaro was forced to return home due to his little bundle of joy being born, Kakyoin fully intended to replace him but by then, his work at the Speedwagon Foundation had begun yielding actual results and he was all too happy to leave the fieldwork to somebody else. It was a decision that he had regretted ever since.

He opened his mouth to speak again but Polnareff cut him off. "Look, I'm not arguing with you about this anymore. Even if you'd been there, it would have still happened. I didn't want anyone else risking their necks for me anyway." His lips formed a toothy grin as he glanced back at the camera. "Besides, you can't be going around putting yourself in danger. Who would lead the field in Standology if you get killed?"

Kakyoin let out a short laugh and threw a disheartened look at a thin tattered binder propped crookedly against the monitor. "It wouldn't be hard, I am the entire field. All they would have to do is take my place."

"You know, you weren't this negative when I met you." Before Kakyoin could protest, he saw Polnareff slam his hand on the table, eyes widened in sudden recollection. "Right, I almost forgot! We're all meeting up in September at Mr. Joestar's home in New York. Jotaro's even bringing his ex-wife and kid!" He leaned closer like an interrogator eyeing down a captured prisoner. "You're coming, right? You know, since you missed the previous one. And the one before that. And the one before..."

Kakyoin sighed and raised a hand silencing him. "Okay, okay I get the picture." He flashed an apologetic smile into the camera. "I have been too hard to find lately, haven't I?"

Polnareff beamed and backed away from the screen. "I'm told that the first step to recovery is recognizing the problem. Besides, you have a ton of stuff to catch us up on. Mr. Joestar keeps every article you publish", he added excitedly. "I'm sure your parents do the same thing, huh?"

The cheerful tone cut through him like a knife as his own fingers tightened involuntarily around the styrofoam cup. Polnareff was still looking at him, clearly expecting an answer but what he had asked wasn't really a question. His friend already had the obvious answer in his head and was merely waiting for a confirmation and giving him a chance to brag about his accomplishments a bit. Any other alternative hadn't even entered his mind and telling him the truth now felt like disappointing a starry-eyed kid on Christmas morning by telling him Santa wasn't real.

"Kakyoin? Are you sure you're all right?"

Polnareff's voice rose to uncomfortable levels again, making the speakers buzz and crackle. He nodded at the camera and managed a small smile. "I'll be there, I promise."

"Great! The old gang's finally back together!" He clasped his hands tightly and rubbed them together in anticipation. "So, now that we've got that settled it's time to get back to the matter of your ladyfriend. Or lack thereof."

The remark just made Kakyoin's eyes roll further back into his head as he suddenly realized how tired he really was. The day seemed to have started at least a week ago and he had forgotten when was the last time he had had a decent meal or a shower. He wondered what his co-workers had been seeing for the past couple of months, a drained, shambling version of himself with uncombed hair and perpetual bags under his eyes. Polnareff had been trying endlessly to get him to date every girl he exchanged two words with but the prospect had never enticed him much even when he was still a fresh-faced teenager with a head full of dreams. Now, the idea seemed more like a bad joke he wished his friend would finally get out of his head.

"Goodbye Polnareff", he sighed and ended the call.

 **One day, Kakyoin will catch a break. But it will not be this day.**

 **Save a writer, leave a review.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Guys, thanks you so much for the lovely reviews! Each and every one of them made my day! This fic will come out in monthly installments throughout 2017 so you can expect the next chapter in February. Meanwhile, please enjoy the chapter for January. Bonus points to whoever spots the very, very, VERY subtle Jotakak moment.**

* * *

By the time he stepped out of the building, it was already close to midnight.

The city was sinking into a restless slumber around him, its breath warm on his chilled face. The Speedwagon Foundation fought the slowly retreating July with air-conditioning strong enough to prevent ice cream from melting which, according to Kakyoin, only added another layer to its alienation from the rest of the perfectly ordinary Hondai. Outside, in the real world, the sweltering heat was only going to get worse but every once in a while, autumn felt like making a comeback and thin, lukewarm rain fell from the sky, ruining the mood of many college students whose summer break had just begun. Occasionally, groups of colorfully dressed young people passed him by, their laughter loud and crisp in the growing silence of the night. A short teenager sporting cropped blue hair peeked out from behind her classmates to blow him a kiss and then immediately huddled behind her friends, giggling hysterically. Her group eventually overtook him and joined the rest of the dissolving party crowd as they hurried for the underground stairs leading to the subway.

He watched them flow past him like a stream of vibrant voices in flashy attires and opened his umbrella as the frail raindrops that dotted the sidewalk became heavier. There was no need for him to hurry, the line that took him straight home had been out or order for most of the week due to some freak accident on the tracks; his second best option only ran every half an hour and circled around most of the business district before looping back to his zone. Most nights he didn't mind the long detour but as he raised his eyes to the inky black sky, he found it beckoning and strangely comforting. The sharp fluorescent glow of the subway that awaited him suddenly reminded him too much of the cold, barren light of the computer screen he had been glued to the entire day. Despite the increasingly heavy rain, this night looked like a good opportunity to ditch public transport and walk home.

As if sensing his master's thoughts, Hierophant materialized at his side and took the umbrella from his hand. Kakyoin gave him a small thankful nod and wondered whether his stand was being affected in any way by his own internal turmoil. The saddest part about being the only expert in his field was that if he did not know the answer, then probably no one did. Sometimes, when his research hit a snag he would try to discuss the problem with Hierophant hoping to get a new perspective from mirrored thoughts but the results were always inconclusive. His stand had never disagreed with him but it had never agreed either. Instead, it had simply sat there, listening to his voice and nodding every once in a while until the solution arose from the depths of his own mind which, he suspected, was the stand's intention all along.

Still, his stand seemed to act the same throughout the past couple of years and their bond had not suffered even when things got particularly nasty. According to everything he had come to learn, this was good news. Hierophant was, after all, a reflection of his own will, which meant that despite the ever-increasing bumps in the road, he was not nearly ready to give up.

He walked on into the closing night and let his mind drift off as somewhere in the distant clouds thunder rolled.

* * *

On the day before he moved out to go to college, his mother told him that he had been a different person since he returned from Egypt.

The true meaning of those words wouldn't reach him until years later but back then they had made perfect sense. He had been quite lost before that, adrift in a world of exams, grades and all kinds of useless information swishing back and forth in his head with no purpose or meaning. Some of his fellow classmates swore that it happened to everyone and that he was bound to find his calling any day now. The school counselors had suggested a couple of career paths and were really insistent on some of them but every conversation left him just as confused as before. It never seemed to be about what he wanted to do but about what everyone around him thought he would do best.

Years went by and nothing really changed. He had been moderately good at every subject not because they interested him but because good grades kept parents and teachers happy and allowed him to live a more carefree life compared to some of his classmates whose parents practically shackled them to their desks. He had even briefly flirted with sports, being part of the school track team for five years until it became just another thing to worry about and training every day did not appeal to him anymore. He eventually dropped the team right before his father's new job destination took him to Jotaro's home town despite his teammates' vehement protests. He had assured them that they would be better off without him but seeing their dejected faces just made him deeply envious of their passion for the sport. That day, as he walked out of the school to start his summer break, he had sworn to find something worth dedicating his life to before the year was over.

And then he went to Cairo and had his body and mind stolen from him for six months. When he was finally in control again, he was lying on his back in a strange house with a throbbing headache staring into deceptively cold green eyes.

It had been a wild ride since that day. He had been to more places in three months than in his entire life, met new friends and faced old fears. He had nearly died in the Old Quarter of Cairo, the same place where he had first crossed paths with Dio Brando and he had been saved by the Speedwagon Foundation when his life seemed almost forfeit. He had used the time he spent recovering in their care to learn everything about them, their role in aiding the Joestar family back in the thirties and their lesser known department dedicated entirely to the study of the supernatural.

He remembered his heart skipping a couple of beats at the time. Hierophant had gently squeezed his shoulder and nodded in understanding. The long search was over, he had finally found his calling.

He hadn't mentioned it to anyone then, not even to Jotaro, who he had talked to almost every week after they returned to Japan in the middle of January. He had spent that winter furiously making up for lost time and adjusting to life with a new robotic spinal column. The rest of his last year of high school was pretty much a blur too, until the final exams came and placed him among the top five highest marks in the prefecture. His parents had been impressed, although he sometimes overheard them wondering what had gotten into him all of a sudden. His father had described him as a man on a mission which wasn't that far from the truth. The Speedwagon Foundation was famously demanding of their researchers and from the few times they even mentioned their less orthodox endeavors in the media, he was convinced that their supernatural division was no different. They sure as hell were not going to take him in just because of their past history so he had to pour all the resources he had into being the best. Then, maybe he could finally find answers to the questions that had plagued him ever since he laid eyes on Hierophant Green. He could dedicate his life to deciphering the mystery behind the existence of stands.

Tokyo University had been a logical destination, although his degree of choice left most people scratching their heads. With his grades, he could have done anything and psychology was deemed an easy major by many. Even Polnareff had taken multiple jabs at his decision, implying that he was not a real scientist unlike Jotaro, who had chosen sunny Florida as his destination to study marine biology. Those jabs became less and less frequent as he found himself buried in work and the world around him faded into the background. He emerged from his shell five years later with the highest GPA in his year and a looming feeling of dread as his interview with the Supernatural Research Facility drew nearer. He had sat in their breezy air-conditioned office, sweating under his freshly ironed clothes, wondering what would happen if they decided that he wasn't good enough for them. In his obsession over exams and papers during his time in college he had thoroughly failed to come up with a backup plan just in case his ambitions fell through. Getting rejected now would mean going starting from scratch.

When they told him that he was in, it sounded like a choir of angels. To everyone else, however, it was like a perfectly executed melody devolving into gibberish.

Nobody had believed him when he had first broken the news, not even Jotaro and Polnareff though their surprise lasted for about five minutes before all the pieces from the last couple of years clicked into place. In the end, they were the only ones left after all the dust settled down and his decision remained unchanged. His teachers and classmates had called him a fool to his face for throwing away a brilliant future; his father had simply stopped speaking to him altogether. His mother had begged him for the longest time to reconsider, even showing up unannounced at his cramped student apartment the day before he was about to move to Hondai, where the Foundation's supernatural branch was located. Her pleas eventually turned to tears and then, into passive-aggressive talk of having another baby while she was still young. When he went on with the move anyway, she gave him the cold shoulder for good but, every once in a while, postcards from around the world would turn up in his mailbox showing that she still thought about him sometimes even though they never contained anything except her flowery signature.

In the end, she was right when she said that he had come back a different man from Egypt. He had come back with a new purpose, on a new set of tracks that diverged completely from the path she and his father had planned for him. There were days when he wondered what life would have been like if he had followed theirs but whenever those treacherous thoughts crept into his mind, they usually came accompanied by a young, dark-skinned face framed by a mountain of brown curls and a press pass clipped to her clothes.

* * *

Somehow, he had managed to take a long detour himself.

The rain was a full on downpour now, heavy, loaded drops thundering against the pavement and running in rivulets down his umbrella. Hierophant peeked over his shoulder towards a building etched from the night shadows by the golden glow of street lamps and looked back at his master, as if seeking confirmation. Kakyoin stood still for a while, wondering what road his mind could have possibly taken to lead him there, then nodded quietly and walked away. He remembered the building too; it was the Hondai College of Humanities where, four years ago, the International Convention of Psychological Science had taken place.

As the storm roared louder over the quickly darkening city, his mind drifted further.

* * *

Kakyoin leaned against the coarse stone wall of the main college building and breathed in the cool morning air. It was already half past ten and he had been talking non-stop for almost an hour which he hoped had been time well spent for the surprisingly high number of people who showed up for his presentation. Even now, people were still pouring out of the conference room talking in a lively manner though their words were lost in the general hum of the entrance hall where hundreds of people from different countries moved like ants in a colony, hurrying to make their appointments, catching up with old friends or popping out for a quick smoke before the next presentation. The atmosphere inside the building was electric and buzzed with just enough life to exhaust him especially after the avalanche of questions that had arisen at the end of his talk. After fulfilling his duties, he had discreetly slipped outside the building, far away from the designated smoker's area and stood in blessed silence, letting the thoughts in his head settle into place. It had been his first conference since he had joined the Foundation and it had gone well. That, in itself, was a surprising turn of events considering the outlandish UFO paraphernalia and blatantly fake ghost pictures that people felt compelled to send to his work address. They had listened, they had asked smart questions and they had treated him like one of them. There were times when having the Speedwagon Foundation's name attached to your work allowed you to walk a thin line between eccentricity and innovation, provided you didn't take the former too far.

He fished out a thermos bottle from his bag and took a long gulp of hot black coffee feeling his eyes slip closed as caffeine brought his tired brain back to life. When he opened them again, he found a tall dark-skinned woman standing next to him. Her young face was framed by a mess of brown curly hair fluffed constantly by the cold March wind. One of the lapels of her neatly pressed pantsuit sported a blue press pass with her name and the name of the newspaper she worked for printed in bold capital letters.

She spoke to him in correct albeit somewhat stunted Japanese. "Excuse me, Dr. Kakyoin. Can you I borrow a minute of your time?"

He held back a small smile at her formality as he replied in English. "I haven't defended my PhD yet so just Mr. Kakyoin will do." His eyes quickly scanned her press pass. "You are Abigail Smith from The Guardian, I take it."

Her eyes brightened for a second at the sound of her native language. She nodded quickly and tucked the plastic pass inside the lapel of her jacket as if the name of her newspaper was a nuisance.

"Your presentation was very informative", she said in a distinct Brooklyn accent, "But I have to say I was expecting something a lot less conventional considering your department's line of work."

Kakyoin let out a long sigh as an all too familiar feeling of annoyance arose in him. He had been on the receiving end of similar interviews before and could almost hear the slightly mocking tone that was about to follow. His inner pride twanged like a string plucked hard enough to snap but he bit back a sarcastic comeback and rescued his true and tried tone of a teacher talking to a particularly slow student.

"People always expect us to talk about things like ghosts, aliens and stuff out of horror movie scripts", he replied. "They tend to forget that at the end of the day we're scientists, just like everyone else in this building. We take our job seriously. I assume that you do as well."

The reporter stood silent for a while, lips pulled into a tight line as she studied him closely. For a moment, Kakyoin wondered if she had been expecting that answer and was now merely trying to gauge his reaction and test whether his anger was real or not. Before he could say anything else, she stepped aside and leaned on the wall next to him, brown eyes staring into the distance.

"Point taken, she said. "I never meant to imply anything like that. However, your talk was about the close relationship between body and mind and in your recent articles you briefly mentioned the possibility of the will of an individual affecting the world around them." She paused, her voice wavering when she spoke again. "Maybe even the possibility of astral projection?"

It was beginning to dawn on Kakyoin that Hierophant was getting restless. He had known his stand to mirror his state of mind and sure enough, he had been jittery before and after his presentation but this was different. It was a feeling of extreme wariness but at the same time, extreme excitement like a lone animal in the wild suddenly encountering another one of his kind and not knowing exactly what to expect. It was a feeling that he hadn't experienced in years and it carried memories of scorching Egyptian heat and the cold, merciless eyes of the World staring him down in a dark alley. He had felt it again when he had come face to face with Star Platinum and the rest and though the apprehensiveness around his friends' stands had quickly faded, Hierophant never forgot the lesson learned from the fleshbud and now regarded every stand user with an unreasonable level of caution.

Stunned, he turned around to face the reporter as he realized that not once had she attempted to pull out a notebook or even an audio recorder. In fact, she had deliberately followed him to a secluded area, far from the eyes of her peers and was speaking in the same tone an illegal alien would use when talking about a possible immigration reform. He looked past her shoulder where her puffy curls remained impossibly still despite the strong wind and saw the air behind her grow thicker and heavier, refracting ever so slightly the gray rays of the morning sun.

She held his inquisitive gaze, her voice, steady as a rock again. "I was just wondering if the Speedwagon Foundation had any stance on the matter", she continued. "Or if they were considering publishing more about it. It might be a bit unorthodox but it has proven quite informative to some people.", she added quickly as if trying to get all the words out as soon as possible. "Are you planning to share your theory with the general public any time soon?"

She looked at him expectantly and, for a moment, Kakyoin felt a gentle rush of air displaced by the reporter's barely visible stand as it moved closer to him. He felt Hierophant stir in his mind, almost reaching out to touch it and wondered how many people like Abigail Smith were out there, frightened and confused, wondering why no one else saw what they did. He thought of Abdul growing up in Cairo, learning about Magician's Red through trial and error and of Polnareff, walking through life with the trauma of his sister's death turned into his closest friend and a deadly weapon. He had been immensely lucky to meet Jotaro and the rest but how many people were there who had never encountered another stand-user? How many of them thought they were utterly alone like he used to think he was? How many of them had been waiting for years for something like the Speedwagon Foundation to come along and throw them a lifeline?

If anyone could make a difference, he could, he had to.

So he looked straight into the unwavering brown eyes and said, "As soon as I can."

* * *

 **Next chapter comes out in February.**

 **Meanwhile, save a writer, leave a review.**


	3. Chapter 3

**In which things get complicated**

* * *

It was at that point when he realized that the Speedwagon Foundation might not be the lifeline he had expected.

He sat in a small, dimly lit waiting room, fingers tapping restlessly against a faded brown folder while in the background, a bespectacled secretary loudly typed something into a form, occasionally casting mildly disapproving glances in his direction. She had already offered him some coffee which he had declined and then, in the same polite voice, reminded him that the Head of Research was a very busy man and that he was better off trying to reschedule his appointment. Kakyoin had calmly assured her that he would consider doing so if his two previous attempts hadn't been met with the same response. In the end, she had given up trying to dissuade him and went back to her work, pretending he was just a figment of her imagination. Her watery eyes, however, still darted across the room every once in a while, something that Kakyoin had come to expect. Not being able to see his stand set people on edge and most of the Supernatural Department was already slightly paranoid before he came along. Sometimes, he wondered if coating Hierophant in flour every morning would make them feel better.

He shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair and flipped through the contents of the folder on his knees. By now, he knew the whole thing by heart and had run this scenario in his head a thousand times which made the long wait especially frustrating. It all felt like a test to see if he would keep pushing after weeks of dodged meetings and ignored phone calls. A fellow researcher, who had spent nearly two years digging into the undiscovered potential of what remained of the Red Stone of Aja, had once joked that the Supernatural Department didn't really have a Head of Research and Taro Yoshida was just a mannequin with a budget-approving stamp glued to his hand. Kakyoin had merely laughed at the suggestion but now, he was beginning to understand what his colleague had meant. There were people in the Supernatural Department that were considering learning to walk through walls to talk to him before their hair turned gray, which is why it was important for him to remain calm and collected even though every fiber in his body was now vibrating at a different frequency.

The sleek black phone on the secretary's desk sprung to life with an ear-piercing ring. She picked it up, listened intently for a few moments, then slammed it back down.

"Mr. Yoshida will see you now," she said in a dull monotone, before readjusting her glasses and going back to the form on her screen. He let out a long breath, walked across the room and pushed open a tufted black door.

There were wild tales of dribbly candles and skulls when other departments talked about this office but to Kakyoin, it looked exactly like he had imagined it. It exuded an almost deliberate plainness, with bare off-white walls and a single desk made out of red oak that was equally bare except for a computer monitor, a small globe and a neatly organized paperwork tray. He had heard that the key to being taken seriously by his peers was to make your job as mundane as theirs but the Head of Research of the Supernatural Department took it to a whole new level. Even his co-workers sometimes glued colorful stickers to their monitors or had pictures of their spouses and children in their workspace. The room he had stepped into looked sterile, as if its occupant was afraid of leaving any imprint upon it before it was taken over by his successor. Either that or he had gotten rid of every personal touch his predecessor had left and just never bothered to fill in the empty space.

The man behind the desk glanced up from his work and gave him a long appraising look. Blue eyes narrowed under the bright fluorescent light as he drummed a fountain pen on a thin stack of recycled paper that bore the same rejected stamp as the folder Kakyoin was holding in his suddenly very sweaty hand.

"You are Noriaki Kakyoin, aren't you?" he said as he pushed the rolling chair back and stood up, the corners of his mouth rising ever so slightly. "Mariko tells me you are a very persistent man."

"Only with things that matter, sir."

The eyebrows over the blue eyes rose for just a split second as the man's face settled into a politely blank expression. "I see. How can I help you then?"

Kakyoin shot a quick look at the envelope on the shiny wooden surface, then placed his own folder on top of it. "Sir, I understand that a hundred applications cross your desk every day," he paused trying to check the man's reaction but his face remained unchanged so he went on, "I wanted to make sure you had read mine to the end before rejecting it."

He felt a stone drop in his stomach as he had finished speaking. The words had come out harsher than he had intended but at least they had served their purpose. If this was indeed a test, he had definitely reached the benchmark expected of him. His only hope was that he hadn't overreached it.

To his relief, the man just shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I wouldn't be sitting behind this desk if I could get away with not reading everything that crosses it. Don't let the people in this building let you think that they are the only ones working hard." He skimmed the content of the folder before he slammed it shut and slid it across the desk towards Kakyoin. "You ask us to grant you the funds for a program to find stand users and help them develop their abilities. Maybe even create a school if enough people are willing to sign up. Am I correct?"

Kakyoin held the scrutinizing blue stare wondering if whatever test he was supposed to pass was still going on. There was something in the man's look, something elusive that only flashed up for a millisecond, like a well-hidden subliminal message on a movie screen. He was used to people in his department constantly glancing behind him, hunting for things their eyes could not register but this was different. He watched the man's fingers drum a repetitive, telltale rhythm on the desk and frowned. Taro Yoshida was uneasy in his presence, which was highly unlikely for the man who held all the cards and even more unlikely to play in his favor.

He turned the folder around, making the bright red stamp of rejection face Yoshida. "Yes, sir, it is a great chance for our department to make a difference. Which is why I am really having trouble understanding why you turned it down."

Without any warning, the man stood up from his chair and took a few slow steps across the room. "You've only been with us for a year?" he asked and let out the smallest smile as Kakyoin nodded in agreement. "Word of advice, don't let the people in this building distract you from the big picture either. I've been in their shoes and sometimes we get so wrapped in our own research, we fail to see how it might affect others."

Kakyoin sighed as he scanned the index page for the section where he had painstakingly charted out the costs. "Sir, I have taken our funds into account and we could easily spare some budget. If no one turns up for the program, we will not even have to spend a dime. All we need to do if put the word out there and…"

"You thought this was about money?"

The sudden steely tone in the man's voice left him speechless for a second. When he found his voice again, it was frustratingly monosyllabic. "Sir?"

Yoshida's hands folded behind his back as he faced the only window in the office, turning away from Kakyoin. "What do you think will happen if aliens land tomorrow?" he asked.

For a few seconds, Kakyoin could do nothing but blink at the question. "With all due respect, how is that relevant?"

Yoshida just shook his head, his eyes fixed on the bustling city below. "Come on, Mr. Kakyoin! You're a smart man or so I keep hearing. Give me your best guess; what will happen if aliens land tomorrow?"

Kakyoin ran a hand through his hair, trying to gather his thoughts. The conversation was quickly veering into a direction he hadn't anticipated. He paused, his mind suddenly treading lightly to avoid a hidden tripwire. "Well it's difficult to know but if I'm perfectly honest… people would be nervous."

There was a slight scoff before Yoshida turned to face him. "'Nervous' is putting it mildly, don't you think? I would have gone for 'scared out of their minds'" He pulled the curtains closed in one sweeping motion and turned to face him. "Now, what if we tell these same people that aliens have been living among them for quite some time and not only that, but they are invisible and have supernatural abilities beyond their understanding. What do you think will happen then?"

In Kakyoin's mind a tripwire snapped. The world around him grew blue, ice-cold and very still while somewhere inside him, Hierophant opened his eyes and tensed like a spring.

He felt the blood drain from his face as his words turned to steel in his mouth. "Stands aren't aliens, sir! They belong to real people who deserve to know what is happening to them!" He stemmed the anger flooding every corner of his mind and went on a calmly as he could. "There are stand users out there who are scared out of their minds already. Shouldn't we let them know they're not alone?"

Yoshida shrugged as he fished out a cigarette pack from his breast pocket and turned it over a few times. When he looked back at him, the subdued flicker in his eyes was back. "I'm sure they will manage just fine." He stopped to fiddle with his lighter and nodded at the globe on the desk. "You had people trying to track down the device that awakens those powers, right? An arrow of some sort?

Kakyoin thought of his two best friends and almost laughed at the notion that they answered to him in any way. If anything, they had been the ones helping him, doing most of the heavy lifting while he just shed light on their findings from the comfort of his own apartment. Familiar guilt pecked at his heart again before Yoshida lit up a cigarette and sucked in a long, shaky breath.

"Once it is located, we will be able to control its influence and the problem should be solved very quickly" he said opening up Kakyoin's folder again and casually exhaling a cloud of ashen smoke over the pages. "There's no need for this program, there never was. You're talking about reaching out to statistical anomalies here. There's more people with psychopathic tendencies out there than people with stands. We are better off focusing on the damage they do, don't you agree?"

The cold fury in Kakyoin's mind snarled and struggled against its restraints. Behind his eyes, Hierophant stirred like a wounded beast and rose behind his master's back, silent as the smoke drifting from the cigarette. As he fought to calm his racing heart, he considered the irony of his current predicament. Here he was, alone in a room, with an invisible trump card that he couldn't even use without effectively burying all his years of hard work. He thought of Jotaro and for a brief moment, envied him. At least, Star Platinum could always punch its way out of a problem.

"When we went to Egypt to save Holly Kujo, four out of the six of us were born with their stands", he replied as his mind shifted gears into a non-violent track. "One of those four was only aware of his powers after a personal tragedy, he never even got close to any arrow." He took the folder from the man's hands and flipped over to the figures of stand users at the end of the report. "According to my most conservative estimates, the number of potential stand-users could be as high as one in a thousand in Japan alone."

He could tell Yoshida's breath was caught in this throat by the way the gray smoke hovered still before his face. His gaze followed the data on the page for a while and Kakyoin's heart leapt to his throat. Maybe he wasn't all that different from all the other researchers who mocked him all those years ago. After all, the man was a scientist, just like him. He could be reasoned with if he could only compel him to actually listen.

He took advantage of the stunned silence and went on, "Sir, I know it's not what we normally do here but what's the point of our research if we don't use it for the greater good? Think about it, we're in such a privileged position…!"

"No, you are!"

Blue lightning flashed in Taro Yoshida's eyes and Kakyoin knew immediately that he had overplayed his hand. His last words had dented some sort of armor, clamped tightly around the man for the entirety of this conversation. He remained silent as his mind flailed trying to find, something, anything that would make him understand where he had misstepped and how to fix it.

It grasped at a random fact about how the most common eye-color for German people was blue.

Most people outside of the Supernatural Research Department were unaware of the fact that Taro Yoshida's grandfather was German. Even less people remembered that the man had been a major player in founding the Supernatural Research Department after defecting from his country during World War Two. He had been part of the team that fought alongside the German army against the Pillar Men and some claimed what witnessing Kars' destruction firsthand was what drove him to keep the Supernatural Research in the Foundation on par with everything else and not just a bizarre addition of an eccentric billionaire long after Robert Speedwagon passed away. He was also the one who established the branch in Japan, after moving there with his Japanese wife in nineteen forty five. He had dedicated his life to his work and much like the Joestars, was bound to pass on this duty to his descendants.

One after another, the puzzle pieces fell into place in Kakyoin's mind as he felt another cold stone drop to the bottom of his stomach. The shifty, distrustful flicker in the blue eyes since the moment he had stepped inside the room now made too much sense now. Little Taro Yoshida was raised as a mere human in a world where vampires, ghouls and all kinds of dark forces were real and not the fictional, easily defeated enemy that people dreamed up as a twisted reflection of their own minds. He had grown up very aware of the fact that he was a small and defenseless being whose only real weapon against the overwhelming threat of the supernatural was knowledge that he wielded like a sword.

And so, he studied every supernatural event without exception like a knight studied a dragon while other, mightier knights who held the power of the sun in their hands had all perished long ago. And now, after the biggest dragon had been scattered to dust in Egypt and everyone could rest easy, another smaller, friendly dragon had walked up to him and asked for a chance to train more dragons.

There was no way he could win this, not now, not ever. Taro Yoshida had never doubted his report or the science behind it. He believed every word and he was absolutely terrified by it.

Still, he couldn't walk away without giving it one last shot.

He slid out a file from the folder and placed in on the desk. Its front page was almost entirely occupied by a large photograph of a gaunt, brown face with milky, unseeing eyes.

"Shortly after we reached Egypt we were ambushed by a man called Oumar N'Doul", he said softly as Yoshida's eyes continued to stare him down. "He had been a common criminal on the streets of Cairo until he crossed paths with Dio Brando who turned him into something much more dangerous. His last words before he killed himself to avoid capture were 'Even evil needs a savior.'" He flipped to the second page where N'Doul's rap sheet unfolded. "I think people like him deserve to have a savior that isn't another Dio."

Yoshida barely glanced at the document, his lips curving into a venomous smile. "I see, is that what you see yourself as? A savior?"

For a moment, he felt like the world had been snatched from under him. His carefully constructed rhetoric teetered in his mind like a tower of cards ready to collapse. The word had sounded bitter when Jotaro had relayed the story to him in the hospital room in Aswan but in Taro Yoshida's mouth, it stung like an open wound. It brought forth a picture of a pathetic man with a big ego who thought himself a messiah to his own kind. A man exactly like Dio Brando, a man that Kakyoin swore he would never become.

He quickly snatched the file back from the desk and muttered "Sir… I see myself as someone who can help."

The man's blue eyes gave him one last cold glare before he sat back behind his desk indicating that the conversation was over. "With all due respect, Mr. Kakyoin, none of these people asked for your help."

* * *

But that had been a long time ago and this was now.

The rain was gradually dying down by the time he turned the corner that led him to his street. He folded his umbrella and let the water trapped in its folds trickle on the pavement as a long yawn escaped him. The long walk had been a good opportunity to get his mind on the right track but it had also drained him and now, a warm shower and a good night sleep beckoned him more than ever. He shook the stray raindrops out of his hair, fumbled with his keys and froze.

Someone was standing next to the front door of his apartment block.

Whoever it was, it was clearly a woman, though her age escaped him until he saw a backpack with a high school logo slumped at her feet. She pressed herself tightly against the wall hoping for the narrow eave to protect her from the rain but long, dark hair still hung in stringy clumps in front of her face and all the way to her shoulders, leaving damp stains on her clothes. Behind her, a shapeless blue mist swirled in the darkness that pooled around her despite the weak yellow glow of the streetlamps. It coiled around the girl's ankles and wrists for a moment, then drifted away.

Kakyoin stopped in his tracks as a familiar feeling washed over him again; two unique animals meeting each other in the wild, waiting for the other to make the first move. He stood still for a while, letting the alarms in his head quiet down. Egypt had taught him not to underestimate the power of a stand-user based on their youth but if the blue stand had been hostile, it would have sniped him in the dark, way before he had even spotted it. He looked at the girl, shivering in the night air and reminded himself that this was not Egypt. This was someone who had thought it worthwhile to stand under a thunderstorm to wait for him.

He had to proceed carefully, though. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off before she had even opened her mouth.

He walked closer, his moves slow and deliberate and watched the girl stir, as if awoken from a trance. Moving equally slowly, she brushed her soaked bangs aside to reveal a pale face with dark, deep-set eyes. As she took a tentative step forward, he watched her fingers wrap around a protection charm wrapped in teal cloth that hung from her neck.

"You see it too, right?" she asked.

He gave her a small reassuring nod and replied, "Yes."

* * *

 **Next chapter drops in March. Meanwhile, save a writer, leave a comment.**


	4. Chapter 4

"Thank you for your hospitality," said the girl after a long bout of silence.

She stood in the doorframe of his bathroom, toweling off her dripping hair. Under the bright light that flooded the apartment she no longer looked like a ghostly vision but like a regular girl in a navy-blue high school uniform that looked like it had gone through a washing machine while still on her. A large stain bloomed over her long checkered skirt and what had once been her tie was now a rag hanging limply from the strap of her backpack. Her bare feet shuffled uncomfortably on the cold tiled floor.

The dark blue mist Kakyoin had spotted at the entrance was still there, curling loosely around her arms as she pulled the towel over her head to dry the back of her neck. Every once in a while it would acquire the vague shape of a hand or a face before dissolving again like watercolors in the rain. He was reminded of Hierophant's early stages, when he was just a translucent, intangible string. Back then, he didn't even have his distinct color, just a soft viridescent tinge that sometimes caught the light just enough to project the faintest green shadow on his skin.

He stood in the hall, keeping his distance as the girl squeezed the last bit of moisture out of her hair and waiting for her to speak again. When she turned around, however, she looked past him, straight into the yellow eyes of his stand which had discreetly materialized over his shoulder and was now carefully pretending not to notice their uninvited guest. Behind her back, her own stand darkened and swirled into the shapeless blur of a stormcloud. Kakyoin followed its jerky, uneven movements and suppressed a frown. If this was another young stand, it was not like Hierophant at all. His stand's movements had always been smooth and fluid, this one seemed to be struggling against itself, like an animal that couldn't decide how many legs it needed or whether it would be better off with wings or scales.

The girl's dark eyes stared, wide and unblinking. The misshapen mist at her back began to unweave, long, foggy strands reaching out to touch Hierophant. Kakyoin cleared his throat meaningfully and watched them freeze in place and quickly pull back.

"Sorry," she muttered.

Silence fell between them again broken only by stray drops of rainwater falling on the tiled floor. Kakyoin's voice of reason, the one he had been purposefully ignoring so far, was now wondering if he hadn't made a big mistake by letting her in without asking any questions. Sure, she was the first stand user to approach him in years but the girl was clearly disturbed. He had tried to remind himself that not all stand users were friendly, stable, or willing to talk to him but it was hard not to let his guard down for a kindred spirit. The girl seemed to be no older than himself when he first met Jotaro and the others. He distinctly remembered what it had been like before that and wondered if she was as scared of him as he had been of Dio.

If so, he wasn't about to make her first impression of stand users to be the same as his.

"What's your name?" he asked trying to break the ice.

Against all expectations, that worked. She stopped staring at Hierophant and let out a small embarrassed cough as she ran a hand over her crumpled clothes in a futile attempt to smooth them out. Finally, she straightened up and bowed slightly before replying "Ritsuko Shirogawa."

Kakyoin suppressed a small sigh of relief. Awkward he could deal with, awkward was a thousand times better than scared. This way, at least, they were both on the same page.

"Would you like some tea, miss Shirogawa?" he said.

She gave him a small nod and followed him into the living room, bare toes sinking into the fluffy carpet. Hierophant hung back and unwove towards the small American-style kitchen to busy himself with an electric kettle, his yellow eyes occasionally glancing at the girl over the counter top. Kakyoin's own eyes, drifted towards her shoes sitting in a small puddle or rain at the entrance.

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked while another persistent voice at the back of his mind wondered how she had managed to find him at all. A few years ago he had briefly considered the possibility that all stand users had a low-key probability manipulation power that increased the chances of them meeting one another. This encounter was almost enough to make him reconsider that hypothesis. After all, what were the chances that out of all the Japanese tourists in Cairo, Dio just happened to cross paths with the one stand user who was about to move to Jotaro's home town.

She shrugged and lowered herself on a large green sofa, backpack pressed firmly between her knees. "A couple of hours, maybe. I came here straight after cram school, they keep us until nine on Fridays." She sat in silence, watching Hierophant pour boiling water over tea leaves and added, "You sure come home late, though."

"Not when I'm expecting company", he handed her a steaming cup and felt Hierophant's stare intensify as he floated over. "You could have just come back another day, you know? I'm sure you had better things to do on a Friday night."

"Or I could have come back and found out that you moved or something." She pressed her fingers against the porcelain to warm them, then looked straight into his eyes for the first time. "I'm sorry to just show up like that but I couldn't wait any longer. I kept thinking that this could be my only chance."

Kakyoin nodded in understanding and glanced at the stand settling around its master in a faint blue outline. "Have you had it for long?"

"For about a year now but it's hard to know exactly." She took another slow sip, as if mentally preparing herself to get the words out. "My mom died last summer, she had cancer. By the time we found out, it had spread through her entire body so there was nothing they could do." Her lips pressed into a tight line before she steeled herself and continued. "It first appeared at the hospital and then at her funeral. At first I thought I was losing my mind." She peered at the blue charm around her neck and let out a short, hollow laugh. "I even thought that I was being stalked by a demon!"

Kakyoin peered close at the purplish-blue nebula and suppressed a smile at the memory of Star Platinum. "It's not unusual for stands to manifest after a traumatic event." he replied and watched the corners of her mouth twist in a mirthless scowl.

"Is that so?" She looked down into her cup, rising steam clouding her stony face. "You're saying it's like a compensation deal with the universe? 'Sorry your mom had to die, here's something to make up for it?'" Her hands wrapped tighter around the porcelain cup, tapping it restlessly. "What happened to you to get superpowers?"

Kakyoin shook his head as his earlier conversation with Polnareff replayed in his mind. "The universe has nothing to do with this. You were born with an exceptionally strong will which makes you very likely to develop a stand. This…" he pointed at the pale mist curling around her "is nothing but a reflection of your mind trying to cope." He paused, giving her time to assimilate his words and added "What kind of superpowers did you get?"

For the briefest moment he saw a familiar lightning flash in her eyes. "I don't know! It just appears when things get rough but it doesn't really do anything. I tried to get people to see it but no one knew what I was talking about, so I started doing my own digging. That was when I came across you."

She put the cup aside and unzipped her backpack. Kakyoin drained his tea as he watched her rummage through heavy textbooks and, eventually, pull out a rolled up magazine. When she smoothed it over, he was greeted by a glossy cover bearing a large picture of a UFO soaring above a full moon with a werewolf howling at it in the background. The eye-searing kanji above it read " _We Want to Believe: True Tales of the Strange and Unusual"._

Kakyoin's stomach dropped to his feet while his newly resurrected theory of probability manipulation fizzled out. Shame prickled at the back of his neck as Hierophant slammed a hand over his face and cursed Occam's razor and while he was at it, Taro Yoshida as well. He had come out of his office completely crushed, full of uncertainty and even doubting his own intentions. However, after a couple of days his dejection turned to anger, the kind that burned everything in its path and ignored every warning sign his mind sent him. If the Foundation would not listen to him, there were other ways and the more time he spent thinking about them, the more sense they made. He knew from personal experience how people associated their budding stand abilities with hauntings and _True Tales_ was the most popular paranormal magazine in Japan. It hadn't been an easy decision to make, which is why he never mentioned it to anyone. After spending years fighting to be recognized as a serious scientist even considering the idea felt wrong but it was his best chance to get his message out. It was time to turn his biggest enemy into his closest ally.

Of course, things hadn't turned out exactly as he had expected.

He had spoken to Tadashi Kimura, a self-proclaimed expert in ESP on the condition that they would not use his real name. He had laid bare everything he knew about stands and even left an email address for further questions, though his fingers had trembled a bit when he wrote it down. He had been restless for months after the article was published, fearing that someone at the Foundation would read it and put two and two together but the actual outcome had been arguably worse. His inbox had been immediately flooded by people convinced that aliens stole clothes from their washing lines or that ghosts of deceased teachers roamed their school grounds at night with a few more irritating individuals who accused him of being a fake. It all soon devolved into a delirious string of nonsensical messages and eventually, into silence. He had all but forgotten about this unfortunate experiment until now.

Oblivious to his internal turmoil, Ritsuko flipped through the magazine and laid it open before him. "This interview right here is with you, right? Tenmei Green?"

In her mouth his pseudonym sounded anything but clever. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose feeling a headache coming on. "Why didn't you just write me instead of coming all the way here? And how did you know where I lived?"

"I tracked down Kimura and asked him." Kakyoin's face remained carefully blank but she must have noticed Hierophant twitch in the background because she quickly raised her hands in an apologetic gesture. "Look, I'm sorry! I know I shouldn't have but I had to know if you were the real deal. I've been to every psychic in town and they were all useless. Are you going to help me or not?"

There it was again, a mysterious cold lightning in her eyes, the same he had spotted in Taro Yoshida's all those years ago. He looked at the girl's troubled face and wondered what kind of storm lived inside her. Tracking down his personal address may have been just a simple act of teenage impatience but the tone in her voice was beginning to hit desperation. As if noticing his inner musings, the misty blue stand gathered closer around her, like rain clouds before thunder rolled across them. Maybe, just like its master, it wasn't as innocent as it seemed.

"I'll help you if you tell me where Kimura lives" he replied with a half-smile. "Deal?"

"Deal!" Without missing a beat, she tore out a page from a small notebook on the table, jotted something down and slid it over. She gave him a few seconds to skim the contents of the paper then pointed at the dark indigo haze behind her and said "I want you to make it go away."

* * *

A hundred feet beneath the city of Hondai, railway worker Hideki Mishima was beginning to get antsy.

The train tunnel stretched into infinity in front of him, dark and warm like the belly of a giant whale. Every once in a while it rumbled quietly as trains rolled on the neighboring tracks but even that comforting sound soon faded, indicating that the subway had long ago closed its doors. Now, the silence was almost as oppressive as the darkness, filling his ears like soft, thick cotton and broken only by the gentle buzzing of his helmet light and the luminaires that lined the walls of the tunnel. Their eerie bluish glow only exacerbated his already overactive imagination.

He bent down over the broken third rail and swore under his breath as he fiddled with the fastening clips, making as much noise as possible. He hated night shifts more than anything in the world because they reminded him that, despite quickly approaching thirty-five, he had never quite gotten over that irrational fear of the dark that made him sleep with a night light until he was fifteen. He had always been too ashamed to tell anyone about it, not even his own wife, though he suspected that she had figured it out by now and kept his little secret to herself. The thought brought a small smile to his lips. Ikuko always knew what to do and what to say to make him feel better. It was for her that he continued to accept night shifts even though working underground, in the dark and all alone, sent shivers down his spine. Lone night shifts mean a higher risk, which meant a bigger paycheck, which meant a nice condo in the center of Hondai where they could raise as many kids as they wished. No imaginary monster was going to keep him from that.

He fastened the clips around the rail and took one last appraising look at his work. It should keep it from moving around for at least another three or more years though a persistent voice at the back of his mind was telling him that he would be here next week trying to fix something else in this godforsaken tunnel. Line four was quickly gaining a reputation for being notoriously unlucky, because the word "cursed" was just too ominous for railway workers who hung around dangerous equipment every day. For the last couple of weeks, there was always something new and troubling going on there: brand new fasteners being worn down in a few days, strange cracks in the rails, short circuits in flawlessly installed electric units and so on. It was a damn miracle that no one had died yet.

The lighting fixtures around him hummed a bit louder than usual. At the far end of the tunnel, one of them flickered a few times and went out.

A cold hand grabbed at Mishima's insides. For a few moments he stood still, his knees threatening to give out. His eyes peered into the blackness ahead as his mind conjured up all kinds of nightmarish visions that in the blue hue of the luminaires felt as real as the ground beneath his feet. He cursed again and sank his teeth into his lower lip hard enough to taste blood. This was not the time to give into his paranoia. Line four was full of weird flukes like that. That's why they paid them the big bucks to fix it. If he was a smart man, he would pray for this cash cow to never die.

Another fixture in front of him crackled like a lightbulb crushed under a heavy boot and plunged another section of the tunnel into darkness. Mishima let out a quiet moan as he felt his own mind beginning to unravel. He bit down on his lip again as the pain brought back his focus. There was a fuse box somewhere on the right side of the tunnel which controlled the illumination for this entire sector. If he could find it, he should be able to fix the problem. Even if they all went out, his helmet light ran on a battery. He would be fine, it would all be fine.

As if the line had read his thoughts, the last fixture emitted a snapping sound and fizzled out right next to him. He let out a deep breath and turned to the right side of the wall, eyes wide as plates in the weak light of his helmet lamp. It took him less than five minutes to find the fuse box and when the yellow beam fell upon it he almost wept with joy. He yanked the cover open, stared inside and frowned. Everything seemed to be running smoothly after all. Perhaps the problem was with the fixtures themselves. Perhaps they all mysteriously went out of order. At the same time. In line four. Where nothing ever seemed to last, no matter how high the quality or how frequent the maintenance.

The air around him grew thick and heavy. Darkness gathered behind his back, soft and smooth like velvet.

The fuse box exploded.

In the blinding, red cloud of pain that enveloped him, Hideki Mishima's crippling fear of the dark flaked away exposing the bare bones of his soul. He thought of Ikuko, of the beautiful condo they were saving up for, of what their future son's face would look like and of the hardships she would have to face raising him alone. He felt the burning smell of his own flesh floating up his nostrils and thought of what his body would look like when they found it here the morning after. He thought of his wife having to identify him and felt bile rise up in his throat.

"I'm sorry, Ikuko," he thought as he spasmed on the floor, "Please forgive me. I did my best."

The crimson cloud of agony behind his eyes flared up one last time, then slowly melted into the pitch blackness of the tunnel. The cracked helmet lamp flickered erratically for a few seconds and went out as well.

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 **Save a writer, leave a review, guys. You know you want to.**


	5. Chapter 5

**I'm back. Sorry guys, I tried to get this out sooner but my new job is greedy regarding to my free time. Enjoy a new chapter. Or not. It's a free country.**

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An old Yiddish proverb about God laughing at men who made plans wormed its way into Kakyoin's head. He blinked and let out an awkward laugh himself. "I'm sorry, what?"

The girl shifted in place and clasped her hands nervously. "You heard me. This stand or whatever it's called, I want you to help me get rid of it. You can do that, right?"

Her voice was teetering on the edge of hopefulness as she quickly glanced towards Hierophant, as if fearing that he would take offense at her suggestion. Kakyoin sat very still for a while and when he spoke again, his own voice sounded strange and distant to him. "You came all the way here, you stood in the rain for hours just to ask me how to make your stand disappear?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "You're an expert, aren't you? You're the person who has dedicated the most time to this subject." Kakyoin nodded back mechanically as she quoted him almost word for word, tapping on the glossy open pages of the magazine. "I don't care how difficult it is or how long it takes, just tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. Whatever it is, I can take it."

There was a slight tremor in her last words but her face betrayed none of it. Her dark eyes bore into him like two diamond drills, dissecting his expression as he struggled with his own quickly spiraling thoughts. He called Hierophant away, felt him melt into the back of his mind in a whirl of confused dejection and asked "Why?"

It was a question she clearly did not expect. Her eyebrows twitched as the carefully contained irritation in her voice threatened to spill over. "What? What do you mean why? Why do you even care?"

He shrugged. "You obviously do. It seems like you care a lot. If you want my help, then help me understand."

"I forgot you were a shrink", she grumbled and slid the magazine across the table making sure the howling wolf on the cover faced him straight on. "Look, I don't believe in any of this supernatural stuff! It's that simple, Freud. Can we move on now?"

The obsessive-compulsive corrector in Kakyoin suppressed the overwhelming need to tell her that Freud had been discredited a long time ago. Instead he pointed towards the omamori charm wrapped in blue cloth around her neck. "Why do you have that, then? Seems like the kind of thing a true believer would wear."

She groaned and peered down at the small, fragile amulet still dripping rainwater on her skirt. "See, that's exactly what I mean! I don't even know why I got it!" She grabbed the blue cloth between her fingertips, as if picking up a dirty rag. "This is madness and superstition, okay? This is not me! I don't want to believe in this!"

She cut herself off abruptly, stood up from the couch and walked towards the far end of the living room. Kakyoin could feel frustration swarming over her, dark and heavy like the storm that still pelted his windows. The floor lamps gently dimmed and flickered as she walked past them and he had to wonder whether he was part of some cosmic joke. Here she was, throwing a supernatural tantrum with a gift she insisted in disowning while, at the same time, reflecting the same exact attitude that had kept him a pariah amongst his peers. He had heard it being dressed up in fancier or more insulting words but it was the first time it ever came through this crystal clear. _I don't want to believe._ Now there was a statement that left no room for further discussion. Someone should have put that on a poster instead.

He allowed himself a small concession. "No offense, miss Shirogawa, but it seems like it believes in you."

The way her jaw clenched behind her flushed cheeks as she turned around almost made him regret it. "Don't give me that mystic crap!", she retorted. "I know you think I won some kind of lottery but I'm telling you, I don't want it. Not even a little bit. Why is that so hard to understand?"

Kakyoin did not reply, choosing instead to focus on the writhing mass of her stand. The obfuscating picture before him was slowly coming into focus and it was turning out to be quite a depressing one. The stand's strange shape and behavior had bothered him from the start, it was too primitive, too poorly defined. After a full year, Ritsuko Shirogawa's mind should have already left a noticeable imprint, like a small child would start babbling in their mother's language. That is, unless she had chosen to reject it and deliberately blocked out any connection between them.

His stomach twisted as he watched the blue stand flail under the yellow light of the floor lamps. He remembered a rather cruel American experiment from the early forties involving newborn babies. Their caregivers were instructed to feed and care for them but never to speak or interact with them in any other way. Four months into the experiment, half of the babies had died, despite being physically healthy, proving that human contact was essential to their development. What would the same treatment do to a being whose very existence depended on their would-be caregiver? A being for which dying was not even an option.

He forced himself to focus. "Having a stand is not a prize but it's not a curse either", he replied and watched her sour face brighten up.

"Great, so it won't matter if I have it or not, right? Take it from me, give it to some random schmuck on the street. Let them be a superhero or whatever the hell they want. I just want to go back to my normal, boring life!"

He frowned at her sudden outburst, "A superhero? I thought your stand didn't have any powers"

For a moment the color fled her face but she recovered quickly and rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean, stop dodging the question. Can you take my stand away, yes or no?"

The light bulb to her right buzzed like a troubled beehive and the air around him felt dry and thin. The steaming hot tea in his cup suddenly grew ice cold. He felt the hair on his arms rise on end and looked straight into the girl's eyes, wondering if she was doing it on purpose. Would her invisible companion actually lash out at him if he said something she didn't like? Would that finally compel it to find a shape other than a strand of fog? There was really only one way to find out.

He shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, I can't."

To his relief and slight disappointment, there was no sudden attack. For a long while, she didn't say anything at all, she just stood before the window, watching lightning tear at the dark sky, eyes glistening. Something told Kakyoin that she had probably expected that answer but had hold out hope until the last moment. Her small, delicate Eve's apple bobbed in her throat several times before she spoke again. "What do you mean, you can't? What about your epic trip to Egypt, then? What about Seiko?"

It took a few seconds for Holly Kujo's Japanese name to register and another few seconds for the implications to settle in. She had become Jotaro's sister in the events he described to Tadashi Kimura but the nasty details about her plight suffered very few alterations. He cast a cursory glance and the girl's arms and neck and asked, "What about her?"

She shrugged, dark eyes darting across the room, before finally settling on the magazine. "Well, you guys managed to get rid of her stand, didn't you? You said that it never came back after you guys returned from Cairo."

There it was again, that subdued pleading that had managed to make him uneasy ever since he first heard it in her voice. He leaned forward, his tone slow and deliberate. "Seiko's stand was draining her life, she would have died if we hadn't put a stop to it." She nodded quietly but did not reply. "Your stand, has it been hurting you? Have you felt sick or different since it appeared?"

She remained absolutely still, her lips pressed into a tight line as she pondered her answer. Kakyoin took one last look at her pale skin, checking for bluish hues or scars but found nothing even remotely similar. There were large bags under her eyes and her fingertips were short and stubby from frequent nail biting, all signs of anxiety not unusual in a high-school senior at the end of the school year. She looked unusually skinny in her uniform, all knees and elbows, like a child who had grown too tall too quickly. There was nothing that pointed to severe health problems but then again, Holly Kujo had no external symptoms at first. The extreme weakness and fever took well over a year to develop and by then, her illness was already progressing at breakneck speed. For a moment, he felt a cold hand grab at his insides. If this was another case like hers, there was absolutely no guarantee that Ritsuko Shirogawa would not just collapse tomorrow and there would be nothing he could do to prevent that.

"I told you, it just follows me around like a dog, nothing else." She let out a long, sigh and began pacing to and fro, as if catching a second wind. "Why does that matter, anyway? You did it once, you can do it again. What makes that Seiko girl so damn special?"

Kakyoin's mind briefly drifted towards the colorful collection of omiyage from every corner of Japan that sat in a large ornamental box in his bedroom. Holly and her husband liked to travel and whenever they did, she would always send him something along with a nice postcard detailing their trip. The fact that she had never spoken to him directly for years had not mattered at all. That fact alone made her pretty special in his eyes.

"It's more complicated than that", he explained, "Holly's… I mean Seiko's stand was born with a purpose that it couldn't fulfill so it turned against her. That's why we went to Egypt, to do what she could not. We never forced it to disappear. In fact, we had all assumed that it would become a regular stand but instead, it just went dormant."

She rolled her eyes and cracked her neck, sending ripples through the dense blue fog. "Well, make it dormant then! I'm not picky as long as it stops stalking me. Or do I literally have to be dying?"

The sudden crack in her voice cut through Kakyoin like a blade and maybe she noticed, since she stopped pacing and stood in the center of the living room, silent and fuming, waiting for him to answer. He paused, struggling to find the right words. "You said that it wasn't hurting you, right? Does it do anything else that might put you in danger? Anything at all?"

There was a split second in which he could swear he had seen a strand of the blue stand morph into a thin, bony hand. Long, spider-like fingers clasped empty air, then faded back into the unformed mass clustered around the girl. He felt Hierophant stir in his mind, yellow eyes struggling to peer through his own and pushed him back. Ritsuko, meanwhile, let out a short, hollow laugh and tore through the room, towards her shoes sitting at the entrance.

"It exists, that's enough for me!", she snapped. "But not for you, apparently. I need to be on my last legs to be worth helping!"

She snatched up her backpack and threw it over her shoulder, sending a few stray raindrops flying in Kakyoin's face. He raised his hands in an apologetic gesture and followed her to the entrance as all the lamps in the apartment hummed and crackled. "Hang on, I'm telling you the truth! Seiko's case was very unique, I'm not sure if it'll ever happen again. And even if it did, I wouldn't know where to start!"

She just rolled her eyes and started pulling on her socks and shoes with one hand. "Whatever, some expert you turned out to be." She threw the crumpled issue of True Tales at his feet. "Here, you can keep it! It's my own damn fault for trusting this nonsense."

Shame washed over Kakyoin again as the cheesy cover stared at him from the floor, a silent testament of a shot in the dark gone awry. "I never claimed I was an expert, just the one who's researched stands the longest", he said as she guffawed and turned towards the door. "There's a million things I don't know, miss Shirogawa, that's the whole point of research." He paused for a second, as a well-crafted script he never had the chance to use assembled in his head. "Listen, I know things seem pretty scary right now. I know that there's a million things you don't understand too but there's no need to be afraid. Your stand is… well, it's like a musical talent or an eye for art. Would you want to get rid of those?"

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You could gouge out my eyes or cut off my ears. If you want to get all metaphorical about it."

He waited for her to laugh at her own rather dark sense of humor but she didn't. She stared at him with such resolve that he couldn't help but feel disturbed. "Come on, I'm sure you don't want to go that far."

Ominous lightning flashed in her eyes as her cheeks flushed with anger. "I thought we established that you have no idea what I want!"

"I'm sure that you don't want to harm yourself. Right?"

She opened her mouth but the snapping remark he expected died in her throat, replaced by a frustrated huff. In the silence that followed, Kakyoin heard the faint sound of her stand rustling against her clothes and hair, like a cat scraping at a locked door. Something resembling an eye with a vertical pupil started to form in a loose strand of blue fog, blinked lazily a few times, then wobbled and stretched, losing its shape. He watched it sink into the indigo depths, wondering if there was any way to repair the damaged link between them. Whatever barrier Ritsuko Shirogawa managed to put up to prevent her stand from forming, it had been a very effective one.

"I'm sorry that you had to get your stand that way", he said and watched her eyes glisten again. "I know that looking at it reminds you of what happened to your mom but trust me, it will get better. That I can help you with. If you want to, that is."

The girl's expression darkened as her head snapped up like the barrel of a shotgun. "Will you stop with the Freud crap, already!", she yelled. "You're not listening! It has nothing to do with my mother! How many times do I have to say it?" The tears she had been furiously holding back were now flowing freely down her face and she grabbed the magazine from the floor and thrust it in his face. "You said that you would do everything in your power to help people like me. Prove it then! Help me make it go away!"

She choked back a sob and stared at him, pale and red-eyed, her voice wavering between genuine pleading and bitter impotence. Kakyoin's own throat closed up momentarily as he fought for words but the ones he found rang empty and meaningless. The long, claustrophobic silence weighed heavily on them, broken only by the dull monotone hum of the rain.

"Yeah, that's what I thought", she muttered and yanked open the front door to step out of the apartment.

The angry gesture was enough to snap Kakyoin out of his momentary stupor as he lunged after her. "Wait, it's still pouring out there! Take this at least!"

Before she could turn the doorknob, Hierophant broke Kakyoin's mental hold and floated before her, green fingers closed around a small umbrella. She ignored him and walked right through the stand but stopped when the fingertips of Kakyoin's hand brushed against her shoulder. He immediately pulled back, watching her face ignite as she turned around.

"Look, I don't have any answers for you right now", he said and felt a stab of guilt at his own defeated tone. "But I promise that I'll look into it. Do you have an email address? Any way I can contact you?"

Her eyes burned with a dark fire under the weak light of the stairwell. "Go to hell, Tenmei Green. And find a better pseudonym while you're at it."

With those words she turned around and ran down the stairs, her backpack bobbing up and down her soaked back. Light bulbs went out as she walked by, plunging the floors below in darkness. Kakyoin stood in the doorway for a good long while, even after he heard the front door of the building slam shut. Eventually he let out a long sigh and stepped back inside.

He walked towards the living room in a daze and drained his tea mechanically, listening to the thunder roll across the clouds. The bitter aftertaste of matcha spread across his mouth, calming his racing thoughts as he realized that his head felt like it was stuffed with warm cotton. It had been a long day, too long to continue stringing coherent thoughts together. His mind had been running on caffeine fumes and adrenaline for the past couple of hours and his entire body was now paying the price

A long yawn escaped him as the world became fuzzy. He needed sleep and he needed it now. Whatever nonsense the world chose to throw at him next, it could wait until the morning.

He was about to follow that train of thought towards the bedroom but as his eyes blinked into focus, they settled on the small piece of paper left behind by the girl on the coffee table. His tired mind lit up with a faint but evil spark.

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 **And so, the wheels are set in motion. As always, save a writer, leave a review**


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